Green Room

Video: A conference call … in real life

If you’ve ever had to do a teleconference — especially an unmoderated call — then you’ll relate to just about every second of this video from PostGradProblems. If you haven’t had to sit through a teleconference for business, let this be a cautionary tale…..

Blowback

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OK, it did hit most of the highlights. Though there was no one chewing their cud (candy or gum) while speaking, and no one holding a conversation disparaging the other members of the meeting while thinking they are muted.

Or snoring…. We once had everyone hang up, then have the operator kill the conference number, then have everyone dial back in, because we couldn’t get a guy to wake up. I think they identified who it was through the operator.

Oh, and they all appeared to know 1) the purpose of the meeting and 2) to actually have the information being addressed. We regularly have slides sent out for a meeting, then the folks who are actually physically present spend the first half hour talking about things that are on slides they didn’t send out.

1) manage activity with multiple locations from a distance
2) conduct fiduciary investigations without having to be present
3) help my son work on his car from a continent away (really)
4) help my daughter work on her homework from a continent away
5) help my wife with Statistics, Business Theory, Accounting, etc….during.my.lunch.hour
6) negotiate business with potential new customers in an extraordinarily competitive business environment without having to physically be there

See the point? For all its problems, we should extol the virtues of a technology that didn’t exist when most of us were young. This is the triumph of human achievement over adversity and a volatile Nature. It’s what we are supposed to champion on these pages, folks! Pick your chins up!